Thursday, December 02, 2004
WHAT???
Today's item is from a daily Center for American Progress e-mail I get. Today it talks about Rep. Waxman's report about abstinence-only education programs. Check out this one part:
Today's item is from a daily Center for American Progress e-mail I get. Today it talks about Rep. Waxman's report about abstinence-only education programs. Check out this one part:
ABSTINENCE-ONLY PROGRAMS DEMEAN WOMEN: Abstinence only programs frequently reinforce false and demeaning stereotypes about women. For example, one program instructs impressionable students that "women gauge their happiness and judge their success by their relationships. Men's happiness and success hinge on their accomplishments." Another program lists "financial support" as one of the "5 Major Needs of Women" and "domestic support" as one of the "5 Major Needs of Men." Another program tells the story of a princess who advises a knight to save her from a dragon using poison. The poison works, but the knight feels "ashamed" because he needed the help of the princess. He ends up marrying a village maiden only after making sure she knows nothing about poisons. The moral of the story: "occasional suggestions and assistance may be alright but too much of it will lessen a man's confidence or even turn him away from his princess."What in the hell is going on? What alternate reality did I accidently fall into? Am I drunk?
Comments:
Those goddam "complementarians" again. Check out Gender News if you've got nothing better to do and want to rile yourself up more.
Nope, sadly none of us are drunk at the moment. My favorite line from "Sex Respect," an A-O curriculum from the 80s that I found IN OUR OFFICE, similarly divides men and women's needs. They explain that men have carnal desires and want short-term sex, while women really just want love and affection, so they sometimes confuse that with sex. Phhhbt! Even in my school district, where they're paying lip service to "comprehensive sex ed", the only outcome they want to measure is the pregnancy rate as recorded by the school nurses. Not the number of kids having sex, or the rate of STIs, or the girls who get pregnant and drop out or have abortions, but the number of girls who get visibly knocked up, have a baby, and stay in school making a big fuss about it. Sheesh.
Well, I tried that. The damn thing still doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense when you are hungover either.
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